LONG BEACH, CA—Stuart Firestein chairs the biological sciences department at Columbia University, and he came to the stage on the second day of the TED2013 conference in Southern California to address the scientific process. Specifically, Firestein wanted to share his thoughts on science's ability, or lack thereof, to capture the hearts and minds of the general public. Channeling a bit of Socrates, who once famously quipped “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing,” Firestein encouraged a change in the public perception of science—a change that begins with embracing what we don't know.

Firestein believes we have collectively put the scientific method on a pedestal, and we have imagined scientists as fact-producers. As a result, the public thinks scientists collect data and facts and publish them in books. But that's not an accurate perception. What’s really going on in science, Firestein said, is “farting around…in the dark.”

What scientists actually do is think about what they don’t know. “The ignorance is what’s missing” from public discussions of science, Firestein told the crowd. As a word, “ignorance” is potentially provocative, so he clarified. Firestein means "ignorance" in the sense that science focuses on recognizing and studying communal gaps in knowledge (rather than lauding the village idiot). This is the exciting part of science: “the boundary just outside the facts.”

Today, three new scientific papers are published every minute. What do scientists do with all of this? They strategically ignore it. The “point of science is not knowing a lot of stuff,” Firestein said. “Knowledge is a big subject, but ignorance is a bigger one.”

Scientists, Firestein continued, are not putting puzzles together. That implies there's actually going to be a final puzzle fitting together perfectly. They’re also not peeling an onion of knowledge, working toward some core truth hidden by layers of undiscovered reality. Scientists aren't even examining the tip of the iceberg, believing some massive truth lies below. All of those models are wrong, he said, because they assume scientists are primarily concerned with amassing a body of facts.

Firestein said George Bernard Shaw was delightfully right when he noted that “Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating 10 more.” And Firestein said this was a good thing: “We use knowledge to create high quality ignorance.” High quality ignorance is the goal, because what we don’t know makes a good question for a scientist.

So how do we get people excited about ignorance? Can it rejuvenate interest in science? Firestein told the crowd that in the second grade, both boys and girls are nearly universally excited by science. By the 11th grade, fewer than one in 10 have this curiosity for science. What happens in between? From the second grade on, science education often focuses on the accumulation of facts rather than the exploration of the boundaries of facts. It avoids the places where ignorance arises.

Science is a practice of revision, and Firestein asserted that it’s a victory to revise. He's suggesting a major revision in how we communicate science. He believes communicating our quest for ignorance to students and the public is the best way to spark scientific imagination. “Answers create questions... we may commonly think that we begin with ignorance and we gain knowledge,” he prefaced. “The more critical step in the process is the reverse of that.”

This is an interesting discussion in terms of 'scientists aren't presenting facts, they're just refining and improving their areas of ignorance.' It is an accurate summation of the scientific method, and the trick of course is how one communicates this to a public conditioned to the perception that scientists are handing down immutable facts like stone commandments.

I fear, though, that this thread may be another Bat Signal for the usual crowd, but i'm happy to be proven wrong.

Maybe I misunderstood his point, but this struck me as being very weird. I may not have read every paper that was published in my area of research (cellular signaling), but I sure as heck tried. I built "mental maps" of facts and connected results across multiple papers, using it to guide my experiments and figure out where my data might fit in. In many ways I was still "farting around in the dark" but there was a process to it, and the community was working on it together.

While I can see a benefit in making people more aware of how little we truly know (it'd be nice to quash those "the evil scientists and companies are holding back cures for everything" conspiracy theorists), there's a reason why the scientific method is held up high. If we admit that we know very little in the grand scheme of things, what is to prevent someone else from claiming that they have the true facts, the ultimate truth? The scientific method, that's what. The creationism vs. evolution issue is a clear example of this.

While science admits that it doesn't have all of the answers and admits that there's still much to be discovered, the scientific method - that constant demand for proof, that ever-present skepticism - is what is valuable. Would more people be inspired to go into or support science if the unknowns were more prominent? I think it's already very clear that there are many problems remaining to be solved in the world, and many questions that remain to be answered. Anyone who has any inclination for science will see that and be inspired even if we don't point out how far we still have to go. Personally, I'd rather not encourage those who don't understand the burdens of proof to come out claiming that science is wrong, and that the fairy tale they thought up last night is how things truly are...

So ... the next time I apply for a NSF grant I'll just talk about how ignorant I am and how my graduate student is the most ignorant we've had in the past 10 years.

All human existence is about asking questions and dealing with the ensuing challenges of mind and resultant confusion. The scientific methodology has worked well for figuring out how to ask "simple" questions and more often than not answer them. Asking someone to marry you, a complex question, is outside our scientific method's realm (at least for the moment, hopefully forever!).

Also, most practicing scientists don't walk around stating how ignorant they are. This marketing proposal would further deceive non-scientists, scientists can have some of the largest egos around, not to mention the absurdly large personal bias which looms over most laboratories and even cosmological theories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_mod ... urok_model).

Yes it seems to fit perfectly, the biggest egos definitely seem to correspond to the greatest ignorance. eg Bill O'Reilly

Scientists, Firestein continued, are not putting puzzles together. That implies there is actually going to be a final puzzle fitting together perfectly. They’re also not peeling an onion of knowledge, working towards some core truth hidden by layers of undiscovered reality. Scientists aren't even examining the tip of the iceberg, believing some massive truth lays below. All of those models are wrong, he said, because they assume scientists are primarily concerned with amassing a body of facts.

What's wrong is that those aren't models of science, but idiomatic expressions to represent the progress of "creating high quality ignorance" (i.e. doing lots of work to find the answer to the original question)

I would agree that science is essentially the codification of curiosity.

The only correction I might apply to his statement is that it doesn't apply to just science; most schools in the US are all about rote memorization, not analytical thinking.

Schools serve everyone, though. You can force the dumb and the unwilling to memorize, but you can't force them to want to learn or explore. Perverse incentives like standardized test results being used to evaluate teachers means you're getting the easier result most of the time or you're getting great teachers that burn out after a few years of thankless work.

I think I get what he means. The problem with science as taught today is that it presents a bunch of facts. It says "this is what is right, and so is this, and so is this, and" so it goes on. What it doesn't say is how you find those things out. It presents the results of science, but ignores the whole process by which you reach them, largely. Maybe a student is shown how to derive a few of the equations, if he/she is lucky, but I know that despite going to a very expensive private school I wasn't even shown how you got the standard distance of a falling body equation (you know, d=d_0+v_0*t+.5*a*t^2), and thats some pretty basic stuff. I knew nothing about how science (the method itself) worked.

What most people never see is the edges of science, where the actual science stuff happens. The excitement of discovery is dulled with an avalanche of facts. One problem I think is that you need a lot more understanding of how science works to really understand what is going on with that discovery process, but the real problem is that science is always portrayed in the public eye as making immutable fixed unchangeable claims, which means it always comes as a shock when those claims do, almost inevitably, change... because the claims were never solid proclaimed truth before, but only high probability, or current theoretical, truth. Time and time again in the history of science is established thought thrown out the window, often completely, and it likely will be again many more times, but mot people don't know that.

I'm not sure what the solution is, or even if there is a good one at all, but I do agree it's a problem.

I would agree that science is essentially the codification of curiosity.

The only correction I might apply to his statement is that it doesn't apply to just science; most schools in the US are all about rote memorization, not analytical thinking.

Schools serve everyone, though. You can force the dumb and the unwilling to memorize, but you can't force them to want to learn or explore. Perverse incentives like standardized test results being used to evaluate teachers means you're getting the easier result most of the time or you're getting great teachers that burn out after a few years of thankless work.

You can't force people to learn and explore, but you can try to give some incentive to do so though.

I love 'big picture' physics, but there was zero presentation of the 'wow' factor when I did it in high school. My interest in it has only grown since working in IT. Much of what I've learnt about it is from sites like Ars, and books written by physicists like Hawking who are capable of sharing the 'wonder' of it.

Our education systems need to hang much juicier carrots in front of students during the earlier years of their studies to give them the incentive to persist through the drudgery of rote learning. It should be presented more as "here's some really cool stuff, want to learn how it works?".

Most of the 'dumb' people are only dumb because they're uneducated and most of the 'unwilling' are only unwilling because they don't see a payoff. Give them a payoff, and they'll practically educate themselves.

There's:* stuff we know* stuff we know that we don't know* stuff we don't know that we don't know

Most science is exploring the 2nd area with the intention to move it into the 1st area.But doing this often creates more questions, which moves stuff from the 3rd area to the 2nd.

I consider exploring the 3rd area directly to be more along the lines of philosophy.

I think it should be expanded a bit

* Stuff we're damn sure about (math, most physics, engineering, etc)* Stuff we think is right (mainstream medicine, evolution, paleontology, etc)* Stuff we hope to be correct (current medical research, abiogenesis, etc)* Stuff we wish to be able to hope to know someday (life on other planets, origin of the universe, etc)* Stuff we haven't realized that we might be able to conceive of in the future

I would agree that science is essentially the codification of curiosity.

The only correction I might apply to his statement is that it doesn't apply to just science; most schools in the US are all about rote memorization, not analytical thinking.

Schools serve everyone, though. You can force the dumb and the unwilling to memorize, but you can't force them to want to learn or explore. Perverse incentives like standardized test results being used to evaluate teachers means you're getting the easier result most of the time or you're getting great teachers that burn out after a few years of thankless work.

You can't force people to learn and explore, but you can try to give some incentive to do so though.

I love 'big picture' physics, but there was zero presentation of the 'wow' factor when I did it in high school. My interest in it has only grown since working in IT. Much of what I've learnt about it is from sites like Ars, and books written by physicists like Hawking who are capable of sharing the 'wonder' of it.

Our education systems need to hang much juicier carrots in front of students during the earlier years of their studies to give them the incentive to persist through the drudgery of rote learning. It should be presented more as "here's some really cool stuff, want to learn how it works?".

Most of the 'dumb' people are only dumb because they're uneducated and most of the 'unwilling' are only unwilling because they don't see a payoff. Give them a payoff, and they'll practically educate themselves.

The standardized testing doesn't help; if a teacher turns out great students that don't perform well on standardized tests, they get told to improve testing performance.

Also, tracking students would help (tracking, as in different classes better-fit to personality, not GPS tags). Some people do well in lectures, some do well hands-on, and a rare few do well at both. I'd also hazard a bit of class streamlining would help; there's no real reason to take like 14 years of English, by the time one goes through college.

* Stuff we're damn sure about (math, most physics, engineering, etc)* Stuff we think is right (mainstream medicine, evolution, paleontology, etc)* Stuff we hope to be correct (current medical research, abiogenesis, etc)* Stuff we wish to be able to hope to know someday (life on other planets, origin of the universe, etc)* Stuff we haven't realized that we might be able to conceive of in the future

Don't forget "Stuff that upon knowing would cause immediate irrevocable insanity due to its unfathomably terrifying nature."

Yes, what we TOTALLY need to do is convince people that science is a bunch of people who don't know what they are doing. That will TOTALLY help us inspire interest in science and DEFINITELY not encourage the science doubters.

An excellent angle.... Socratic agnosticism should be at the core of any representation of what makes for the core of science. Sections of the 7th Letter go far as well, where the process of "rubbing names and definitions together", stretching inquiry into aporia and difficulty, so that truth flashes out precisely when human capacity is stretched to its limit. For all practical purposes, one has to wait for Hegel in order to see an emphasis on the loss of what one thinks one knows, on the negative, as a way toward greater amplitudes of knowledge.

Even though the natural sciences are in many respects removed from these emphases on torsions of ignorance and the negative, the larger point here supervenes.

Firestein told the crowd that, in the second grade, both boys and girls are nearly universally excited by science. By the 11th grade, fewer than one in 10 have this curiosity for science. What happens in between? From the second grade on, science education often focuses on the accumulation of facts, rather than the exploration of the boundaries of facts. It avoids the places where ignorance arises.

If this is the basis for his argument, he is drawing the epically wrong conclusion.

An excellent angle.... Socratic agnosticism should be at the core of any representation of what makes for the core of science. Sections of the 7th Letter go far as well, where the process of "rubbing names and definitions together", stretching inquiry into aporia and difficulty, so that truth flashes out precisely when human capacity is stretched to its limit.

Wow. I never thought I'd see a mention of the 7th letter... well, anywhere, much less here. You made my day.

I'd like to reply to the substance of your comment, but I fear (and tremble) that my ignorance will be too much on display.

If I understand what the article posits what Firestein said I think Firestein's wrong about ignoring what's already known about a subject. If a scientist doesn't know what's already known in his/her area of interest the scientist will waste a lot of time redoing what was done before. However, by being knowledgeable about a discipline including knowing what's not known the scientist can focus energy on gaining new knowledge and extending understanding in an area of science. Otherwise scientists could be dilettantes and perhaps ignorantly explore areas way outside their expertise. High energy nuclear physicists could ignorantly dive into molecular biology and make amazing new discoveries. That might happen but only after diligent study in the new area.

The creation vs evolution is a good example, because evolution is handed down to the general public like stone tablets, but scientists don't have the faintest idea how lifeless chemicals could randomly arrange themselves into living cells.

They have plenty of ideas. Don't confuse your low-quality ignorance with their high quality ignorance in this subject area.

Edited to add: and of course there's the usual misunderstanding that evolution != abiogenesis, but that's par for the course with low quality ignorance.

No, no, as a scientist you are, you do know something alright. You are a scientist and have spent years in research. How could you say to yourself you know nothing when you are an experienced scientist? But rather, be acted yourself "humble", and that is the key to get yourself dig deeper and deeper into the problems and solving it, and most important, at the same time, you are not irritating other scientists' works.

There's:* stuff we know* stuff we know that we don't know* stuff we don't know that we don't know

Most science is exploring the 2nd area with the intention to move it into the 1st area.But doing this often creates more questions, which moves stuff from the 3rd area to the 2nd.

I consider exploring the 3rd area directly to be more along the lines of philosophy.

Categorized as "philosophy" or otherwise, it's something most self-proclaimed scientific-minded people should never forget. I like your list. If history has taught us anything, it's that our models of nature are constantly changing, sometimes in ways we never could have predicted. Not only do I think the third category is by far the largest, but most of what we *think* we know is probably in need of refinement or change based on use cases we haven't yet explored.

This is good. Those who practice the scientific method will never run out of work .

It's mildly humorous in the 1:15 AM sort of way that what everyone here is doing is philosophy rather than science (or more specifically the philosophy of science).

Another humorous thing is that most people say a view or a position is 'scientific' or 'unscientific' when they really mean that it is 'right' or 'wrong', or 'true' or 'false'. I wish people would just say what they mean to say.

The scientific method is a valuable instrument, but it is of limited usefulness. There are truths that we know that are not scientific. Math is a good example of this. Logic is another example. What is more important is that people evaluate things in a way that is likely to yield true beliefs (critical reasoning skills). The scientific method foots the bill in some cases, but not all.

As far the question 'what is science?' I like the following cop-out answer. Science is what scientists publish in peer-reviewed science journals.

To make an already long, rambling, and semi-coherent post even longer, some more subjects of knowledge that are not scientific are as follows (there are of course others)

While his general premise is good, one must keep in mind that it takes a lot of knowing facts - well better said understanding a lot of facts that one can then turns ones attention to the unknown ignorance - as oppose to the known ignorance, that is one just does not yet have the understanding to know the already known...and hence the quick fix to loss of interest in science is somewhat too simplistic. The science one is taught in second grade requires a lot less facts to understand, thus it is understandable that every second grader could hold an interest and while I do agree there is much to improve in science education and it being with some shift towards the exposing students towards the boundary of facts versus ignorance, by 11th grade science you will have had to also comprehend/learn a good deal of facts and science technique to help satisfy knowing the facts to know the boundaries.The balance of the educators is how much to reduce the fact learning to help maintain the interest of the many versus leaving those who have a good aptitude and interest in fact learning bereft (ie ignorant ) of enough facts to ready to explore the real boundaries of ignorance.

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.